A Great Lakes Oddity: Ice Volcanoes (PHOTOS)

If there's an upside to this year's invasion of extreme cold, it's this: weird and beautiful things are happening in the Great Lakes.

This winter has included reports of ice balls weighing up to 50 pounds in Lake Michigan, icefoots, and near-record freezing that allowed a plane to successfully land on the frosted-over waters of Lake Huron. But among the oddities, the most exciting winter presence here are the ice volcanoes.

Ice volcanoes (known as cryovolcanoes in scientific circles) form along the shore, and can range in size from 3 feet to roughly the size of a house.

While they look like just an ordinary hill of snow, they're really a hardened hollow cone of ice and snow. Instead of spewing lava, they erupt with a mix of ice, water and sleet as the swell builds up beneath it and waves crash against the shore.

Ice volcanoes can be found annually at sites around the Great Lakes, but they require a unique set of conditions. Ground-level temperatures should be slightly below freezing and the waves need to be several feet high.

This past January, hundreds of ice volcanoes cropped up along the Lake Ontario shoreline, in Presqu'ile Provincial Park. Along with attracting tourists, park biologist Don Tyerman said snowy owls were using them as hunting platforms.

"They just perch on top and watch for waterfowl," he told the Windsor Star. "Sometimes we see them eating ducks on top of the volcanoes."

While they're fascinating to explore, naturalists warn against climbing on top of ice volcanoes since their thickness varies, and they could collapse. To see them up-close from the safety of your computer, check out the video below: